Will Pittsburgh Double Fault? I just read Phil Axelrod's article in this morning's PPG and it made me sick.
If you don't subscribe to the PPG, the article is available here:
http://snurl.com/1a8m.
Axelrod describes how Pittsburgh came very close to losing the Men's Futures Tournament to Cleveland. Cleveland!? In fact, the tournament was in Cleveland's lap and they shanked it back to Pittsburgh.
We should consider ourselves very fortunate. Ding, dong, this is wake up call. If we're not perceptive enough to recognize this, and prepared to do something about it, then the AMD Board shouldn't be blabbing about how our mission is to promote and grow the game of tennis!
I've often pondered why a city like Cincinnati, which is demographically very similar to Pittsburgh, can attract and sustain a world-class tennis tournament like the Masters Series event each August.
While attending the Community Tennis Development Workshop in Cincinnati I talked to a few people from that area's tennis community. I got an inkling as to why they have a Masters event. Simply put, their success revolves around cooperation, organization and community. One revealing example is that they have an organization consisting of all the area's tennis clubs. Clearly, they get the concept of "cooperative competition" and how it serves everyone's interests.
The thing that upsets me most about the Men's Futures episode is that the AMD Board, and even USTA/MS, were apparently out of the loop, clueless, about this situation.
In my view, the Futures, the Challenger and even the National Men's 40 and Atlantic 10 Conference Championships are events that must be leveraged to bring the area's tennis community together, creating cohesion and camaraderie within it. Instead, they are isolated islands, just like the doomed autonomous societies portrayed in the Kevin Costner film Waterworld.
The opportunity is sitting there. Are we going to pick it up and score or fumble it to a city like Cleveland?